April's Pouch

 

General plants this Month: Lettuce, Turnip, Runner Beans, Green Beans, Endive, Carrots, Radish, Kohlrabi, Chinese Cabbage, Cabbage, Potatoes, Beets, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kale, Leeks, Parsley, Parsnips, Basil, Cilantro, Lima beans, Bush beans, Peas, Brussel Sprouts, and Collard Greens.

Plants I will be using: Lettuce, Turnip, Runner Beans, Green Beans, Carrots, Radish, Chinese Cabbage, Cabbage, Beets, Broccoli, Kale, Leeks, Parsley/Parsnip, Basil, Lima Beans, Bush Beans, Peas, and Collard Greens.

-Kathryn

Update 1

 Just noting that I had planted my seeds today, meant to get to it at the beginning of the month but sickness got in the way. Scattered them randomly and covered the seeds with black cow fertilizer.

-Kathryn

Bunching Onion, Evergreen White

 

Source: Gurney's

Bunching Onion, Evergreen White concisely produces tender, white, mild flavored stalks. Great for soups, salads, salsas and stir fries. Bunching Onions, sometimes called scallions, are a special type of onion that never form a bulb. This heirloom variety is disease resistant and cold hardy. You can sow a new crop every two weeks and keep growing them into early summer, They also can overwinter. 

-Kathryn

Hamburg Rooted Parsley

 Source: MIgardener

Central to eastern European cuisine, the Hamburg Rooted Parsley resembles a parsnip in appearance. The root also tastes like parsnip but the leaves tastes like parsley meaning the entire plant is edible. You can start indoors 6-8 weeks before last frost or you direct sow after last frost.

-Kathryn

Champion Collards

 

Source: MIgardener

Having a bit of a longer shelf life, The Champion Collard greens are a more compact plant than other varieties, still needs plenty of space, about 18-24 inches of space. You can start indoors 4-6 weeks before last frost, or direct sow 2 weeks before last frost in spring and in fall 6-8 weeks before first frost.

-Kathryn

Red Acre Cabbage

 

Source: MIgardener

Red Acre cabbage is a tightly packed head reaching 6 inches in diameter and weighing around 6lbs, making this great family sized cabbage. Developed from wild cabbages grown off the coast of the Mediterranean, this cabbage is great for all of your cooking and fermenting needs. It's also resistant to Cabbage yellowing Disease. You can stat indoor 6-8weeks before last frost or direct sow as soon as the ground is useable. 

-Kathryn

Calabrese Broccoli

 

Score: MIgardener

Calabrese is a large heading broccoli that is most commonly seen in your local grocery store. A nice feature of the Calabrese Broccoli is that after you harvest the main head it will produce many side shoots that can be harvested, smaller than the main head but leading to 2-3times as much as your first main harvest. Can be sown indoors 8 weeks before planting outdoors or direct sown after last frost in spring and in midsummer for a fall harvest. 

-Kathryn

March's Pouch

 

 Before I talk about my plans for the year I would like to clarify how I am doing this and some early mistakes made. I am taking a pinch of each type of seed that I plan to plant and putting them all in a baggie labeled with the appropriate month. How I decide which seed goes into which month is a combo of information gathered from famer's almanacs and growing information websites; and personal knowledge of my areas temperate and weather tendencies. But of course some plants (like pepper plants) don't have an outdoor seeding recommendation so this is a part of where the trial and error will come in. 

    Early on when I started this idea I did it without any recordkeeping so some seed specifics will be lost, sorry to say. Because of that and the fact that because some plants might do better in your area than mine or that you just prefer other kinds of vegetables, I will be doing a general list of plants that one can plant in that month, a list of plants I will be using and then get into specific seeds in their own post. With that being said, here is March's Pouch.

General plants in this month: Beets, Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Lettuce, Spinach, Onions, Peas, Cauliflower, Parsley, Basil, Leeks, Cilantro, Kale, Nasturtium, Brussel Sprouts, Collard Greens,  and Parsnips

Plants I will be using: Beets, Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Lettuce, Spinach, Peas, Cauliflower, Parsley/Parsnip, Basil, Leeks, Bunching onions, Collard greens, Kale, and Nasturtiums.

-Kathryn

In the Backyard...

    For a years we have grown veg in our backyard, last year we changed our one small and cumbersome bed into three bigger and more manageable beds. In one of those beds [pictured below] I put in some homemade compost. In the compost was random seeds from vegetable scraps that survived the composting process. Those seeds ended up growing plants that I only figured out what they were when the vegetables grew. The surprise of seeing these random plants and the joy of trying the guess what they were alone encouraged me to try this again. But also how tightly packed these plants were ended up not only helping to keep the weeds down but it also in general seemed to imitated how plants would naturally grow in the wild and in turn seemed to make the plants in general healthier and larger. These factors have made me want to this again in a controlled and documented manner.

     Month by month I will scatter seeds in the beds that will grow best in the current month. In the coming months as plants get harvested, others just die off, or spots make them self available for other reasons, I'll add in new seeds that work with the current month. This is all a new experiment and a lot of trial and error will occur, but hopefully with this blog I can document it all and perfect it bit by bit. Hope you all will join me on my journey. Next post from me will be talking about what seeds I will plant in March.

-Kathryn